Chapter 83: Jimmy! – Chapter 83

Ace shakes his head, “If the spores aren’t magic, why don’t the effects just go away?”

Jeremy shrugs, “I just know how the poison works, not why it works. Kelly, do you have an idea on this?”

Kelly nods, “I actually do though in a roundabout way. My guess is that the skill used to create most of the spores is a summoning type as opposed to a creation skill. Many people seem to assume that summoning is a powered up version of creation. Mostly because the quantity you can summon far out classes what you can get with creation. For many skills this starts at a magnitude more. So where one person can create a pound of rock, they could instead summon ten pounds.”

“Most people know about the time limit on summoned objects so I shouldn’t have to go into why eating and drinking summoned food is a bad idea. For most, though, this isn’t even much of a tradeoff as they use the skills for combat. After all, who cares if a fireball’s fire would only last a few minutes at most if you can make it ten times bigger.”

“My research however has shown that creation and summoning spells are very much equal to one another. They just have different benefits and creation will only start to shine in the future. As it is there just aren’t enough people and items capable of countering and banishing. Though the real breakthrough for creation spells will be when anti-magic zones become easy enough to set up, that people start using them in war.”

“Summoned material disappears if countered, banished, or it enters an area that its magic can’t exist in. That last one doesn’t even have to be a true anti-magic zone. Instead, if someone saturated an area with enough fire attuned mana, then ice magic will treat it as an anti-magic zone. This means that while summoning spells are good for adventurers, creation magic is where strategic magic lives. From a simple spell that creates water to keep a person hydrated to creating defenses.”

“Honestly, what we need more of at the moment is creation magic. Look around us, we have stone walls only because we scored the land around us for the material. With Kellinger here being able to shape stone we don’t need whatever we use to be giant blocks. This means that all we need to do is have someone using magic to create rocks nonstop.”

Kellinger frowns, “I don’t mind shaping stone but how is being able to literally create stone sustainable?”

Kelly shrugs, “No clue. I’m sure someone knows, but the tutorial guides weren’t exactly scholars. They knew more than us just by having lived a long time with the System.”

Ace shakes his head, “Okay, sounds like trying to figure out anything more at this point would just be going in circles.”

Kelly interrupts him, “Wait a second, I didn’t get to explain why even after people leave the dungeon they would still suffer some of the effects of the poison.”

Ace raises an eyebrow at her. Kelly notices his displeasure at being interrupted but honestly doesn’t care all that much and continues. “See, it’s a really clever poison and this is connected to why the stuff hits you instantly instead of spreading through the body. Now for anyone that wants to put spells into little boxes, this will be annoying, but spells aren’t just one type. They might have a dominant type like summoning, but.”

Ace snaps his fingers, “We have more to get to. This is really interesting, but your info dump would be better done on paper so more people can benefit from it. Now what’s the tldr of it?”

Kelly snorts, “If I put a tldr in my paper no one would read the paper. Anyway, the spore skill has a minor amount of transmutation in it which alters free chemicals in the body into more of the poison. Not a lot, but enough to shock the body stiff all at once while the summoned stuff has a chance to infiltrate. When most of the poison vanishes that small amount remains and needs to be processed normally.”

Ace nods, “There we go. That’s what I needed to know! Now going by the fact we can dispel it, I will guess that means that you can resist this not only with poison resistance but magic resistance as well? Don’t answer, I can see it on your face. And yes, I know magic resistance is a lot rarer, even the bad version of it. I definitely don’t want any of us to get the complete magic resistance and start having buffs and healing fail on them.”

“Now you and the Barrai’s can take the spores we have and go figure out what we can do with it. If possible, I want an antidote and a resistance potion. It won’t last forever, but I want a monopoly on such things for our dungeon. Not only will it be good for our core group, but the money we can get from outsiders is important to grow our town as well.”

“Though that brings up a good question. The system recognized the two old towns. How do we get that here? I want system shops and services to be available before any outsiders come here. It would suck if someone in the know created a nearby town and stripped us of the ability to do the same somehow.”

Silence stretches out as none of the founders know the answer to this. They have some guesses, but it wasn’t exactly something they had asked their guides about. Finally Doctor shrugs and suggests, “Why don’t we ask the others?”

With no one having a better idea that is exactly what they did and not ten minutes later all the founders had gathered again. This time with the addition of Jimmy, the settlement’s only remaining carpenter. He hadn’t been the best but when told about what was to come with the wolves he had only scoffed, “Not like its a dragon”, and stayed behind to help build the walls.

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Now he stands before the ten most powerful people in the area and potentially the world, depending on how things panned out elsewhere. The only thing keeping him steady under their gazes was that he knew something important. Of course that didn’t stop him from freezing until Ace coughed and asked, “So you said you knew about founding a system town?”

Jimmy snaps to attention, “Yes sir! I don’t know if anyone noticed, but by the end of our construction work I was laying out where stuff should go and deciding on what designs to use.”

The other founders mostly nod at this. Only Kellinger realizes how deep this went. Looking back, even he had been taking orders from him.

Jimmy seeing that they agree he continues, “I gained a skill and completed a path. The skill is architecture and while I won’t share the entire path title, part of it was civil engineer and it cost a lot of points. I had been saving those up for another path related to crafting, but honestly? With what I have learned, it was worth delaying that.”

“Part of the reward for completing the path was some info and a lot of blueprints. Like, all the blueprints we could want for a new town in the wilderness, including a town center. In our previous two towns, the system retro-fitted the town halls to be this. In my opinion, we would have wanted to knock them down and start over anyway.”

“The town center blueprint actually isn’t so much a blueprint as a guide for what counts as one but that isn’t important. What is important is the fact that this is what makes a town be recognized by the system and opens up system based town management. This is why the old towns would have had to start over anyway. The system provided starter towns can’t actually grow. With the management system the people recognized as being in charge of the town can set all kinds of things. This includes stuff like giving out quests for the construction of structures.”

Ace nods, “Is there a limit on how close towns can be? Basically, can someone come in and snipe our town out from under us?”

Jimmy rubs the back of his neck, “Yes and no. The system does take into account pre-existing claims to a point. Because we have built up the area then even if someone made a town center literally right outside our walls we could still found our own town. The problem is that they would have priority in claiming territory because they are technically the older system town.”

“Also important is the race to being a system recognized city. Were a town claims land, a city claims towns. This gives them the ability to do things like apply a tax to system shops and other potentially nasty tricks. Mind you, a city’s ruler can’t just point at a town on the map and say it is theirs. The city actually has to have some claim over it for the system to recognize in the first place. But yeah, we probably want to fast track upgrading our town center into a city center.”

Ace sighs, “Even under the system politics can cause all kinds of nonsense. Not, mind you, that I expected otherwise. Now what does it cost to make a town center? Also, why isn’t there a village center? I would think it would have a smoother progression.”

Jimmy shrugs, “Technically there is a village center. That would be what the old towns had. The thing is only the system can make them and it tends to be less for the benefit of the village as it is for outside forces to control the village. The way one would normally appear is if a village lasted long enough the village head’s home or the local gathering place would be turned into it. Oh, and if the old towns still existed and we made a town hall here, they would instantly fall under our control.”

“As for making a town center? The building itself is somewhat up to us. It does have to be of a certain size and room count, but as long as it is well made that will do. What is costly is a system anchor which is required to finalize the structure. Normally one of those would require so many system coins that to try and use coppers for it would be best done in outer space, so you had enough room.”

“Gold coins aren’t even practical for the purpose of writing out the cost. Side note, there are apparently many higher types of coinage under the system that make our simple metal coins seem worthless.”

Ace nods, “That is interesting but brings up the question of why tell us about this? How do people even afford anchors on a new world in the first place? Seriously, are worlds just devoid of towns or some such?”

Jimmy had relaxed at some point, but with Ace’s pointed question, he straightened up again. “Ah, right. That cost is just if you are buying one. We would have to pay that because we can’t exactly go out and find the rare materials. Also, a city center can slowly form new anchors in prepared structures to form new towns as long as it doesn’t control too many already.”

Ace frowns and Jimmy tries to stand even straighter, “What I mean is normally people have to pay, we don’t. We don’t have to pay the full price at all. Because we are a newly integrated world, there are a hundred cheap anchors available to people with the right paths. Still expensive for us mind you at 1 gold coin, but there it is.”

Ace rubs the bridge of his nose and waves Jimmy away. Glad to be dismissed, Jimmy stiffly walks away so as to not look like he is running. Ace turns to the others and groans, “We really need to stop this hero worship, at least for the other people who stayed behind. We might be the founders, but they are a part of the settlement’s core.”